Reported Pet Deaths Top 8,500

By consumerist.comMay 4, 2007

The FDA said yesterday that consumers have reported 8,500 pet deaths as a result of eating contaminated pet food. Of those, only 20 have been confirmed. However, that number should increase as officials work through a call backlog.

On Wednesday, Menu Foods added 3 million more cans and pouches to its recall list.

So… they arrested the manager at the plant responsible for adulterating the wheat gluten… but what about everyone else down the line? At each point, wasn’t there someone to check and see, hey, these protein levels are off? With 8,500 pets possibly dead and more to come, the wheat gluten tragedy sounds like horrible case of “for want of a nail.”

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

You know, I would pay a good premium for pet food, where all ingredients could be guaranteed to be from North America after this scandal. Now I know that can’t guarantee much, but at least there are a few more standards for food production.

We feed our cats mostly dry food for convenience, but once in a while, we get a couple cans of Nutro Max Cat Gourmet Classics as a special treat. One of our cats gets rodent ulcers, and it’s the only canned food that doesn’t appear to give her any trouble. I really thought there was a difference between Nutro Max Cat and the Walmart brand Special Kitty, but I suppose not. Neither of them has shown any signs of illness so far, but I’m still concerned.

I suppose it’s time now to seriously consider preparing raw diets for my cats. I read about this a couple of years ago, when researching how to get one of my cats to drop the extra pounds she’s gained. The raw diet’s premise is simply that cats are carnivores and they have no need for the grains that are present in most cat foods. See this site for more details, or Google for raw diet cat.

I do feel particularly bad about one incident – there’s a beautiful stray cat that comes and meows rather distinctively at our door. We give him food occasionally, and about a month or two ago, we gave him a can of the Nutro Max Cat. He hasn’t returned since. I’m worried that the can I gave him was bad, and I ended up hurting him :(

…..Maybe it’s just me, but I wonder if I’m going to kill my cats with every new bag of food I open. This is getting ridiculous having to check the recall list every few days! Fortunately, Eukanuba lamb and rice dry is still safe.

…..I’m a plant manager, and I can’t imagine agreeing to put poison in a product. I’d quit first. Orders may come down from the top, but sacrificing that low-level manager is the first line of defense. There is no job worth ending up in criminal court. Stand your ground, people! Sometimes your CEO needs to be told that an idea is idiotic, particularly if they’re surrounded by yes-men…

@bluebuilder: So you want your Melamine or whatever to be certified from North America. There could be some in Mexico… and just because it’s outlawed in this country, doesn’t mean there isn’t any here, just ask your local pot dealer.

@AcidReign: I work in a commercial sized bakery, and a year or two back, we had to sign statements saying that we would not poison or harmfully alter food, and if we saw someone doing so we would report them. It also reminded us that, hey, poisoning people is a crime, and like, bad and stuff (the federal government will fine you large sums of money and send you to ass-rape prison. I mean, DUH!!!